8--See, for example, F. F. Gephart, Transportation and Industrial Development in the Middle West (New York: Columbia University Press, 1909), 72-73; B. H. Meyer et al., History of Transportation in the United States before 1860 (Washington. Carnegie Institution, 1917), 104; A. B. Hulbert, The Ohio River (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1906), 334-335; Leland D. Baldwin, The Keelboat Age on Western Waters (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1941),192.

9--Cincinnati Western Spy, April 19, 1816.

10--I have found no contemporary evidence in support of the view expressed above that the Enterprise was aided by flood conditions. Against this view must be placed the well-known facts that navigation at flood seasons was more difficult than at in ordinary stage, due to the greater swiftness of the current and the presence of great quantities of driftwood. While the distance covered could be shortened somewhat through the use of cutoffs and otherwise impassable island chutes, the force of the
current could not be avoided to a much greater extent at flood seasons than at other times, because of the frequent necessity of crossing from one side of the river to the other.

11--Cixcinnati Western Spy, October 6 and November 24, 1815; Niles' Weekly Register, July 1, 1815; Lexington Reporter, September 6, 1815; The American Telegraph (Brownsville, Pa.), September 20, 1815.

12--Cincinnati Western Spy, April 19, 1816.

13--According to this account the Vesuvius grounded on a sandbar 700 miles up the river from New Orleans about June 1 and remained there until December 3 when the river rose and floated her off. She then returned to New Orleans where she ran aground a second time on the Batture and lay there until released by a rise in the river about March 1. Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, August 3, 1819. The precise causes for these mishaps are subjects for conjecture.

14--1bid., January 15, 1816; Niles' Weekly Register, July 1, 1815.

15 Ibid April 29, 1816.

16--Cincinnati Western Spy, April 18, 25; May 2, 1817; the weight of the Aetna's cargo has been estimated from the freight bill.

17--The Buffalo had just arrived on her maiden trip from Pittsburgh.

18--Cincinnati Western Spy, May 2, 1817.

19--The now traditional account of the record voyage of the Washington describes the public dinner given Shreve at Louisville in celebration of the event but fails to mention that Captain de Hart was also invited. "These two enterprising men," declared an editorial on the occasion, "have gained much of public esteem by their successful and enterprising exertions to demonstrate the practicability of navigating the Ohio and Mississippi, the high seas of the western country, with steam vessels." Ibid., May 9, 1817.

20--Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, August 3, 1819.

21--Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, June 16, 817; Cincinnati Western SPY, June 27 and July 25,1817; The Reporter (Lexington, Ky.), August 27 and December 10, 1817.

22--J. K. Wright (ed.), C. 0. Paullin, Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States (Washington and New York; Carnegie Institution and the American Geographic Society, 1932), Plate 76.

23--Acts Passed at the Second Session of the Third Legislature of the Territory of Orleans (New Orleans, 1811), ch. xxvi.

39--The foundation for this as for many other features of the Shreve legend was laid in the Democratic Review articles of 1848 upon which all histories of western steamboating lean heavily, although few authors appear to have consulted them directly. These articles, however, refer to the George Washington as the vessel in which Shreve broke with the traditional ship model. Democratic Review, XXII, 241-242.

40--Dimensions of the Now Orleans have been taken from John Melish, Travels in the united States (1812), Il, 60; those of the remaining vessels from the customshouse enrollment records, Commerce Division. Ile National Archives.
41--Ibid.. Tonnage figures given here have been adjusted to the old system of measurement in effect prior to the act of 1864.

42--Tables illustrating this trend and based on enrollment records will be published in a forthcoming work.

43--The lightness of draft, which was the prime object of western steamboat design, Was a function not only of hull design and proportions but of the weight of the vessel. To reduce weight was as important as to give the hull a broad and flat bottom. It was partly for this reason that the high-pressure engine was favored over the low-pressure type. It was for this reason, too, that the western steamboat came to be built with a lightness of timber, planking, and superstructure that largely justified the epithet of flimsy. There is no evidence that Shreve made any contribution to this important trend. A statement in his report as superintendent of river improvements in 1833 suggests that he regarded it with disfavor. In defense of his method of snag removal, Shreve declared that so far as "good and substantially built" boats were concerned, virtually none had recently been sunk by snags. On the other hand, his report continued, "a great many of the boats now navigating the Mississippi river are light timbered, just sufficient to hold the plank together to bear caulking"---and hence easily sunk by snags. American State Papers, Military Affairs, V, 210.
44--The data on capacity have been taken from the following: Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, September 23, 1816; Pittsburgh Commonwealth, February 14, 1816; Felix Flugel, "Pages from a Journal of a Voyage Down the Mississippi," 433; J. H. Morrison, History of American Steam Navigation (New York: W. F. Same= and Company, 1903), 217-219. It is worth noting that on her record trip, New Orleans to Louisville, in the spring of 1817, the Washington carried but 155 tons' cargo. Cincinnati Western Spy, April 25, 1817.
45--Hartsough, 45-46.
46--E A. Davis and J. C. L. Andreassen, "Form Louisville to New Orleans in 1816. Diary of William Newton Mercer," Journal of Southern History, 11, 395.

47--An advertisement of the new steamboat Emerald describes her as particularly well suited to passengers, "her cabin being on the upper deck (his italics), entirely secured from accidents." Nashville Whig November 1, 1824.

48--W. J. Petersen, -Steamboats," in Dictionary of American History.

49--Hartsough, 45-46.

50--The data on Oliver Evans that follow have been drawn chiefly from the admifable biography, Oliver Evans (1935) by Greville and Dorothy Bathe.

51--David Thomas, Travel,( through the Western Country in The Summer of 1816 (1819), 61.

52--Communication to the Cincinnati Western Spy, February 16, 1816. This was prior to the construction of the Washington later in this year.

53--XXII (1848), 168. Contradicting the assertion here that the French engine was a low-pressure engine are the facts of its light weight, simplicity, and oscillating cylinder, all of which argue against. its using low pressure, and the assertion of a rival, George Evans, who declared in a letter to Oliver Evans in 1814 that French used forty pounds pressure and over. Bathe, 217.

54--Liberty Hall and Cincinnati Gazette, July I and September 23, 1816.

55--Order of Reference of the Supreme Coors in the Wheeling Bridge Case (Saratoga Springs, 1851), 549-550. Since few western steamboat engines cut off before the completion of five eighths of the stroke, the assertion that the cutoff saved three fifths of the fuel is somewhat exaggerated. Equally to be doubted is the statement that Shreve's engine used but one half the fuel required by other engines A singular claim was made by Oliver Evans for his high-pressure engine but the verdict of both logic and experience supports the superior fuel economy of the lowpressure engine.

56--On two-engine boats to avoid stalling on dead center.

57--Even if Shreve was the first to use two engines and to place the cranks at right angles on sternwheel shafts. he started no revolution. Single-engined boats predominated on the western rivers until well into the forties and sternwheelers played a distinctly minor role to 1850.

60--Correspondence between Shreve and General Gratiot, Chief of Engineers, reprinted in J. Fair Harden, "The First Great Western River Captain. A Sketch of the Career of Henry Miller Shreve," Louisiana Historical Quarterly, X (1927), 40 If.